Of course, one of the biggest realities is that there aren’t actually any states that can fairly be categorized as anti-Obama, pro-secessionist states.
Since the OP hasnt provided any specifics regarding how the USSEC would compensate the FedGov for its property, nor what fraction of the national debt would they be responsible for, I will venture a guess: the OP doesnt want secesion, he just doesnt want to pitch in to pay back the national debt. But we can have that “economic” freedom now: we can just default on our entire debt, and be done with it. Or we can repatriate the assets of the top 10 or 20 megabanks and pay back the balance with that. Of course this would wreak havoc around the world, probably for decades.
But going back to the secesion argument and the fair share of the national debt: assigning them proportional to population is way too generous. It should also be adjusted for natural resource worth, since arguably our military expenditures exist to maintain our natural resources safe. I mean its not fair that a state like Nebraska that is a barren sagebrush wasteland, should pay for the protection of a resource now wholly owned by another country. Somebody should actually do the math, but i suspect its going to be in the several trillions.
Also, question: what will happen to all the seniors on social security?
I remember them as satire on the South, not an actual call for secession. People also circulated columns about the United Kingdom re-absorbing the U.S., but nobody wanted that to happen. But I’m acknowledging that there were some liberals who talked about secession during the Bush years.
When the secessionists recite The Pledge of Allegiance, what word do they say after “Under God”?
They don’t recite that nationalistic pablum.
Agreed. It sounds to me like the Republic of Louisiana would rapidly create a fundamentalist Christian nation, which doesn’t seem too far away from a fundamentalist Islam nation like Saudi Arabia or Iran, except they’d allow women to drive and wouldn’t be into stoning or beheading. (And to be fair, Louisiana probably wouldn’t enforce the death penalty for homosexuality either, but making consensual homosexual relations illegal is bad enough).
I wonder how many people are going to move to Colorado or Washington now that they’re legalized pot?
I don’t think people generally do or would pull up stakes and move to a different state just to live under a slightly different set of laws. People relocate for jobs or climate, etc. but most of the time they stay where they’ve put down roots.
Seceded state governments will still be large impersonal bureaucracies with lots of costly responsibilities and their populations will still be politically and ethnically diverse. The Several States aren’t really about “choices” but to some extent about not trusting outsiders. But left their own devices the differences probably won’t add up to enough to trigger a mass internal exodus.
OTOH, poor people do sometimes move to states with more generous welfare policies, and large business sometimes relocate to a state with lower taxes. But the average person but the average person is neither, so philosophy and a $200 a year tax cut isn’t enough incentive.
What’s more, you get a “race to the bottom” as states compete to keep out the poor and bribe businesses with the result being worse conditions overall.
i guess if the OP thinks credence is owed to the secession petitions, credence is owed to thisone as well.
Oh, that’s the one that petitions to “Deport Everyone That Signed A Petition To Withdraw Their State From The United States Of America”.
I’m all for it. I signed it. It needed only 500 more votes to reach the threshold of 25.000 that the origional petition had.
I signed it while Dutch, once more proving that such petitions only need an email address, no matter if from within the USA or abroad.
This is a terrible comeback. You’ve all but conceded I was right.
Gerrymandering, which you admit to, demolishes your apparent point that extremists are probably electable without altering their positions. That’s not some obscure point I’m making either.
You seem to be thinking I am attacking Ron Paul for some sort of weakness. Nope, I’m just pointing out that he’s in a place politically where it’s unlikely we’ll know how uncompromising he is, and there are thousands of examples of politicians disappointing their more extreme followers. It’s unlikely that Paul will stay his course if he gets close to a majority – but it’s absolutely certain that you don’t know, because his rhetoric can’t be used to predict actual future behavior.
And your reply to the 1/435th comment is just sad. Did you not understand what I meant?
Didn’t we have that war already?
And we are still waiting for the other 7.
In reality, however, no states have filed a petition for secession. All that is, is people filing a token protest over the idiocy of electing Obama for a second term. No states are going to secede.
Although, I gotta admit…it’s nice to daydream about it. What would be the result if one or more states could secede? Interesting conjecture topic.
The timing of this thread makes it a little difficult to swallow that you personally really want to secede, just on principle, and regardless of the outcome.
It’s too late now, but if you wanted people to believe that about you, you would have expressed that desire MONTHS ago.
Right about what? Did you have a point to make? I didn’t realize we were having a debate on this, sorry.
That was fast. Wow, when you work your ass off, you don’t fuck around, do you?
Seriously, WELL DONE! 
Problem is, it’s not really a word. Let me fix that for you :
Stop using the character string “FedGov” as though it were a word if you don’t want to look like an idiot.
Have you ever heard of Abraham Lincoln?
Hrmm. Good post. I never thought of it that way, the civil war makes a LOT more sense to me now.
I read an article in the past year or so – was it in Salon? – that asserted that this is what is happening now with Southern outrage against the federal government. They’re not willing to be part of a democratic system in which they might lose.
Wait, what?! Republicans pro-secession?! What would Lincoln say (other than, “Let me out of this box!”)?!